ARN spotlight on: Western Australia’s Leap Consulting

The 'ARN spotlight on' series explores partners operating in the local channel landscape right around the country, from Cape York to Hobart, Byron Bay to Fremantle and beyond. In this edition, we focus on Western Australia and Subiaco-based partner Leap Consulting.

"Collaboration is key" is a tried and true saying in business, and even though Leap Consulting is situated in Western Australia, it has managed to connect with peers from all over and has made a successful consultancy in the process.

Getting down to business

While Leap Consulting opened its doors in 2004, the story of its managing director, Zaun Bhana, started in 1997.

Bhana started his career working in Darwin, then took up a job in the “Big Smoke” of Perth. Meanwhile, co-founder and technical director, Leigh McDonald grew up, and was also working, in Western Australia.

“My business partner and I both have very similar stories where we probably ended up in business without much thought,” Bhana said.

“You'd like to say there was some romantic story of a business plan and taking a hit, but oftentimes it's bloody messy and you’re confused over time and you just wake up and you're like, 'Oh, I'm in business.'”

The major drive for the business was having a point of differentiation in the market rather than location- or target-based reasons, inspired by a business consultant that “took pity on us in the early years.”

That point of difference, Bhana said, was to deal with businesses that had a plan in place.

“One of the things we just started with was saying, 'Hey, look, we won't quote you, unless you've got a plan or a strategy,’” he said.

“Even in the early years, and even though we only had five staff, we were saying to clients, 'If you don't have a plan, we can't advise you on what's the best path to take.'”

Today, the business has over 20 staff, with plans to expand its workforce further.

Leap has seen its fair share of success, with the business accruing five consecutive years of growth of more than 20 per cent off the back of the mining boom. 

For Bhana, this blessing was also a curse as “it really pushed us forward in a very fast rate.” Looking back, he believes the business probably would not have learned some of the lessons that it did if the growth had not been as rapid.

“That meant we really picked up some poor habits and for a number of years post that growth we missed targets, we didn't lead people well, we missed delivering the right outcomes for clients,” he said. 

“We had this growth that a lot of businesses in WA had experienced and really hadn't put in place the right structure to help continue that growth going forward. And so, about three years ago, we really started to think about, 'How are we going to change the business? How are we going to adapt to the marketplace?'”

In order to adapt, the business expanded and invested into the technology consulting space.

Leap also decided to refine its target market and honed in on middle-sized enterprises, ranging from 50 to 350 employees, as the co-founders found these businesses often didn’t have the right level of knowledge.

“That meant we had to redirect all of our marketing efforts, redirect our vendor alignment, redirect our investments all around this mid-size business alignment strategy and really addressing our clients' technology risks in a way that was what they expected, what they wanted, and where they wanted to take their own company,” Bhana said.

“That was a huge challenge for us. And it has been a big focus that's driven the business and as part of where we're going.”

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Collaboration is key

Leap overcame the challenges it faced over the years through turning to outside help. This is particularly important for the managing director, as he believes that “being in Western Australia, you have to realise that you don't know it all”.

“There's a lot of knowledge to be learned from vendors, a lot of knowledge to learn from distributors and from peers, so we see those three partnerships as being pretty key for us,” he said.

Bhana has also made use of multiple networking events, and it’s helped both the business and his own leadership abilities.

“We're by no means perfect leaders, and coming into a business, you know that a lot of those blind spots and bottlenecks start and end with the owner,” he said.

“If something's happening, it's probably because of us as leaders, and that's where we need to get better. So, we've been using that to help us execute, grow, and probably more importantly put in place the pillars for building next generation leaders in the business [as well as] getting way more mature in our partnerships and relationships.”

Over the years, Leap has racked up a number of vendor partnerships, with four significant deals being with Microsoft, Telstra, Apple and Dell.

In fact, Bhana says Leap’s “most significant relationship” is with Microsoft.

“That's been a deliberate intent around our platform,” Bhana said. “That's the platform that we choose to help our clients grow and scale with, so we've always aligned ourselves with Microsoft.”

Dell was the first vendor that Leap partnered with and is also an important relationship, but Bhana admits the time difference between the PC maker and Microsoft was approximately the first day of business versus the second day of business.

Then the partnerships with Telstra and Apple are due to Leap’s cloud first and mobile first approach.

“Especially in Western Australia, organisations like Telstra are one of the few organisations that can reach all the areas that we need,” he said. 

“We also see the push for mobile privacy and security, which is key. That's why we've partnered with Apple across the spectrum. For us, they're a key partner in that space.”

Some of these partners have been involved with Leap in one of its recent achievements — its work creating an IT strategy for a not-for-profit high school.

Starting in 2018, the million-dollar-plus project is now entering its rollout phase across 24 campuses in Western Australia and Queensland.

“That all came because we started with, 'Okay, let's talk about your strategy and where you want to go from a business perspective,' not from a, 'Oh yeah, let's talk about the bits and bytes,’" Bhana said.

“We went through that strategic engagement with them, consulting engagement and presented to the board, and one of the key parts of that was our relationship that we created with Telstra, Apple and Cisco Meraki.”

Telstra’s involvement with the project included the use of its network and inter-regional services, and Cisco Meraki’s connectivity and visibility was leveraged.

Meanwhile, Apple’s Financial Services (AFS) was the “linchpin” during the commercial side of the project.

“There were other partners involved at the proposal stage, but the structure and offer from AFS were incredibly compelling for the client but most importantly met their own funding needs,” Bhana said.

“Other partners were putting forward traditional finance offerings that didn’t stack up, so this helped to seal the project win for us.

“We were the only firm partnering with AFS, which surprised us given how dominant their position is in the market.”

Leap’s success extends past recent projects and into its finances, as it is on track this year to achieving $5 million in revenue, with strong growth targets for the next three years due to large volumes of hardware and software and relying on as-a-service products.

“For a partner organisation, recurring services are the thing that you want to anchor to,” Bhana said. 

Of course, consulting is another significant element of the business, so constantly checking up on its consulting revenue and its growth is key, with Bhana planning to push Leap’s consultancy across technology risk segments in 2020.

“When I talk about technology risk segments, I don't just mean cyber security, I think that's an element across every business but what we really look at is kind of like the big five risks for organisations; strategic risks, operational risks, financial risks, reputational risks and compliance risks,” he explains. 

“They are not something that a lot of organisations have a handle on, and we feel there's a huge consulting opportunity to help lead those clients through that quagmire. 

"For many, they’re confused. They don't have the skills to address it all, and they're just looking for how they can meet that challenge head on in the market.”

But another part of the equation comes down to chance, Bhana added.

“We've been very fortunate as well. Sometimes right space, right location, high return on luck; very fortunate to be able to do what we've done with the people that have been part of our journey because we've seen some incredible team members come and go,” he said.

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The power of peers

Through all of this success, Bhana cites “the power of peers” as what has been a great help; the connections made with fellow business owners at IT industry events — ARN events included.

“In Western Australia, it's rare to get so many other owners in one location to go and attend something,” Bhana said.

“That was that kind of opportunity where you learn from others who maybe are a bit further along, have had that challenge before, have gone through that experience. 

“And then you take it all the way back to something like the Connectwise evolve program which is a quarterly meet up with other business owners for two days, going through profit and loss in your balance sheet. Anyone can tell you something in a hallway, until you actually see their profit loss and balance sheet.”

By attending these events, Bhana said discussions with his peers that have been in similar situations are much more productive than general discussions about how to make profit.

“When someone's giving you some advice, if you actually know this person's on a team of 15 sales people, or 30 engineers, I need to pay attention to them,” he said.

“You're only as good as those people you compare yourself to. So if you're not comparing yourself to anyone, then how do you get that knowledge on, 'Am I tracking well or badly? Can I do better or not?' And that's rare.

“You can get that outside of the industry, but those that are in the IT industry; it's incredibly complex and those that are walking that journey are sometimes the best to learn from.”

This sentiment is compounded by the fact that Leap is based in Western Australia, with Bhana labelling the state as insular, so vendors and events that go the distance are particularly welcomed by the managing director.

“We've been very fortunate to have vendors that have included us in programs and allowed us to meet up with other executives in other countries and that engagement from those vendors and distributors has been really impactful on our thriving as a business long-term,” he said. 

“I always encourage partners in Sydney and Melbourne that may be a bit further along, if they ever get some regional partner that ask you a question and they help and answer – thank you. Thank you for giving back, thank you for helping, thank you for your advice, thank you for experience, because it makes a difference. 

“We might never see them again for another six months or another conference, another year. Sometimes those restaurant conversations, pub conversations, hallway conversations can make all the difference for someone's business in a regional location.”

Want to be featured in 'ARN spotlight on'? Send an email to arn@idg.com.au with the contact details of the partner you’d like to nominate for us to profile.